The present invention relates to the pattern recognition technology, and in particular, to an image processing segmentation apparatus suitable for recognizing the number of images in pattern recognition, for labelling each image, for detecting the area of each label, for calculating top or vertex coordinates, and for determining nesting relationships between images.
In the segmentation processing, it has been conventionally well known that the image elements or components (an image component is a set or assembly of pixels, e.g. pixels defined by logic "1" or "0" in a binary image and being connected to each other by the proximate, same logic (i.e. "1" or "0") relation) existing in an image 1 as depicted in FIG. 1A are labelled as L1, L2, L3, and L4 as shown in an image 2 of FIG. 1B in the same manner for sequentially numbering the elements; furthermore, the number of the labelled elements, the area of each labelled image element, and the like are recognized, thereby segmenting areas of an image. Image processing can be utilized in various industrial fields.
In such a processing, a binary image memory 4 for storing binary image signal 3 and a label image memory 5 for storing the contents obtained by labeling the binary image signal 3 are conventionally utilized as illustrated in FIG. 2A. These memory units are configured so that data therein can be directly read through a bus 6 by a central processing unit (CPU) 7. As shown in FIG. 2B, m by n pixels in the vicinity of an objective pixel f(i, j) are identified and fetched from the binary image memory 4 by a software processing in accordance with the contents of a program beforehand stored in a program memory 8. At the same time, the contents of labeled pixels in the vicinity of F(i, j) corresponding to f(i, j) are identified and fetched from the label image memory 5 as shown in FIG. 2C. F(i, j) is labeled according to the contents of the binary image element comprising m.times.n fetched pixels and to those of the labels assigned to the pixels in the vicinity thereof, thereby storing the resultant data in the label image memory 5.
Consequently, above processing entirely depends on the software processing, hence a great amount of memory areas such as program, image, and work memory areas are necessary and a considerable number of calculation processing is required, resulting in a long recognition time. This leads to drawbacks such that the size of recognition apparatus is increased and the cost required is soared, hence such a recognition procedure can not be practically utilized.